Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
Process is no substitute for synaptic activity.
Jeff DeLuca
This is important, and a little hard to understand. English is useful because it's a mess. Since English is a mess, it maps well onto the problem space, which is also a mess, which we call reality. Similarly, Perl was designed to be a mess (though in the nicest of possible ways).
Larry Wall
You can have a negative percent chance of succeeding in a task. For example, if you have a -5% chance of succeeding, not only will you fail every time you make an attempt, you will also fail 1 in 20 times that you don't even try.
Anonymous
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACS in 1 sq. cm.
Alan J. Perlis
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
Alan J. Perlis
It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free.
Steve McConnell
They won't tell you that they don't understand it; they will happily invent their way through the gaps and obscurities.
V.A. Vyssotsky on software programmers and their views on specifications
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
Albert Einstein
The most important computer is the one that rages in our skulls and ever seeks that satisfactory external emulator. The standarization of real computers would be a disaster - and so it probably won't happen.
Alan J. Perlis
Any set of procedures, no matter how well intentioned or useful, that are too difficult to follow, will be circumvented.
Ravera's First Law of System Administration